Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The First Of The Grovelling Apologies

Comes from Kate at SDS, and is echoed here by Kathy Shaidle, the toxic femi-dwarf.

What am I talking about? Two days ago Connie and Mark at FreeDominion made some intensely nasty and possibly libelous allegations re rights activist Richard Warman, which they sourced to Mark Lemire. Note that these accusations are not new (they amount to the claim that Warman "entrapped" Lemire and several other Neo-Nazis into making racist remarks). Furthermore, they have been denied by Warman in the past, and they were judged irrelevant to the origonal CHRC complaint against Mark Lemire.

These allegations were then repeated on Small Dead Animals (guest posted there by Ms. Shaidle), Five Feet of Fury, and elsewhere.

Sometime last evening, prompted by Kinsella, our two ladies realized they might just be facing lawsuits for the rest of their natural lives (longer, if someone keeps up their supply of virgin blood), and so the wretched self-abasement began.

Now, this story got played far and wide in the Righty blogosphere. Prominent folks who were suckered by Lemire and have not yet prostrated themselves include Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.

Time to assume the position, gentlemen.

Ironic that two men so concerned with defended their own right to unregulated speech should be caught spreading possibly defamatory material. I am reminded of that story about giving loaded guns to small children

Also, I am sure there were a couple of MSM columns that referenced the same postings. If anyone remembers one and can provide a link, I would appreciate it.

Update: Mark Lemire's argument hinges on his ability to show that he can trace a user-ID that Warman admitted using to post on Freedomsite (a Nazi site), plus a user-ID that Warman claims he did not use, to the IP address 66.185.84.204. However, run this number through google and you find people arguing about junior hockey, dog grooming, and a whole lot of other stuff besides. I ain't no techie, but it looks like a whole whack of people have made use of the IP. How you can make any accusations about Warman from this is a mystery to me.

Another Update: From Mike in Scott Tribe's comments:

According to ARIN reverse lookup, the IP is owned by Rogers Cable: [...]As a customer of Rogers myself, I know they rotate their IP to residential users every 3 weeks or so. They also send their residential customers between netblocks - I have had IP addresses from this same 66.xx.xx.xx block, as well as from 72.xx.xx.xx, 74.xx.xx.xx and 99.xx.xx.xx That only evidence that whomever posted was doing so from a Rogers customer computer. Throw in a NAT, and you can’t even tell which computer it was. Consider an open wifi access point and it could have been someone wardriving. None of this so far indicated Warman. It is no evidence at all. Christ I hate amateurs who think IP logs are written in stone.

18 comments:

Those apologies should read, "Holy shit! I really am as stupid as all the progressives have always claimed I am."

In Connie and Mark's case, they are actually far more stupid than anyone could have ever hoped for. Hook up with Nazis and guess what, morons? You're a Nazi. Doesn't matter how much you claim to like Jews. You're allied with Nazis. Joined at the hip - and stupid enough to do their dirty work for them.

If this is indeed a case of bad judgment, I feel sorry for everyone involved. Many people in the blog sphere get caught up in their zeal from time to time. Quite frankly, I enjoy the fact that blogs don't read like Readers Digest. Most who blog, don't have the resources to adequately defend such action in out elitest legal system.

I would not however feel sorry for those who knowingly published information that they knew to be false.

I'll be watching with interest as well. If the information is false, I would like to see the architects punished to the greatest extent of the law. Should the information be true, I will also be interested it the fallout on the other end.

Just one correction, if I might: Kathy, not Kate, posted the piece over at SmallDead. She's supposed to be looking after the house while Kate is away. I believe that CC has a ripe comment or two about that.

Dante, in all seriousness, when the "evidence" is coming from a couple of (literal) Nazis, there's a pretty fine line between knowingly publishing something untrue and knowingly publishing something that's almost certainly untrue.

People like the Fourniers aren't "principled conservatives." They're absolutely the lunatic fringe.

At the very least this shows the huge difference in behaviour when mistakes are made.

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake.

If a liberal makes a mistake, there will be a character assassination of the person who pointed it out to them. And there MAY be a tiny blurb buried somewhere in an obscure location, indicating that you were at fault for perceiving that the liberal made a mistake.

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake.

If a liberal makes a mistake, there will be a character assassination of the person who pointed it out to them. And there MAY be a tiny blurb buried somewhere in an obscure location, indicating that you were at fault for perceiving that the liberal made a mistake.

....The biggest mistake is aligning oneself to being a big C conservative or big L liberal. There really isn't much difference over time.Unquestioned political allegiance is a mental disorder unless you are trying to make a living from it.

The biggest mistake is aligning oneself to being a big C conservative or big L liberal.

Uh, no. The biggest mistake is aligning oneself with fucking Nazis. Right now, over on FD, Connie Fournier is canonizing Terry Tremaine, self-described leader of the National Socialist Party of Canada, claiming this slime is a victim of Richard Warman.